DIALOGUE ORGANIZATION

What can be learned from the model of the dialogue organization is applicable to almost every corporation today, because we all find ourselves in a rapidly changing environment with countless options for improvement and searching, while at the same time, encountering an onslaught of fierce competition. We simply must be organised to solve difficult problems rapidly or we'll find ourselves on a peak that is far from optimum or stuck in an unprofitable valley with no effective way out. The fact that landscapes are shifting so rapidly suggests that, there is no perfect size or number of cells. Different areas of the same corporation have varying degrees of problems confronting them all of the time. One particular area of a corporation has different intensities of problems at different times. In fact, the discovery of the appropriate cell size will be evident by its success and, the success itself will alter the optimum cell size for that unit.

The amount of flexibility, adaptability, and innovation that is being demanded in all areas of our corporations is increasing rapidly. Intelligence is becoming the single most sustaining competitive advantage. Intelligence includes not only our ability to be flexible but also, our capacity to decide quickly and locally. A corporation that is not attached to its current forms, definitions, or products is best suited to the continual rethinking that is the essence of the strategic questions in rapidly changing times.

Organising by dialogue and cells creates the maximum number of "surfaces" with the surrounding environment and the maximum variation in environments. This way of organising is key to being able to see and act strategically. This approach to organization is optimised by having a balance between the varied input of various landscapes, exploration of the space of possibility, and continual improvement on whatever peak is currently being climbed. Attachment to one's current peak is the source of strategic blindness and inhibited strategic action.

Analysts suggested that IBM was fully aware of the changes in their industry but they failed to adjust. The same is insinuated about GM and Ford in the arena of small cars and foreign competition. Xerox, failing to meet the Cannon challenge in a timely way, received the same judgement. The analysts are all making a similar mistake -- identifying the corporation as the individuals in it. Many of the individuals in IBM and the other companies truly did see the new direction of their respective industry and the problems that were going to spin out of that direction. (Although, I suspect that the percentage who saw, before the event, was small when compared to the whole - and compared to those who saw what was happening after the event.)

The corporation of IBM could not see the direction. It was a classic hierarchy with very little cell structure and lacked the processes of dialogue that go with that structure. IBM had far too few surfaces exposed to the outside world, far too few explorers searching for uncharted peaks, and far too few interchanges that demanded resolution at local levels. The ability to chunk the organization and the environment was not an appreciated or developed skill in the company. No one was equipped with the ability to alter the granularity of distinctions or viewpoints. The capacity for dealing with increasing complexity was inhibited. Flexibility in thought and action was not intentionally designed into the organization by the upper echelon.